February 5, 2013

Diary Of A Pregnant Woman, By Agnes Varda

Agnes Varda is one of my film heroes; her 1999 documentary, The Gleaners And I, was what finally pushed me to start making movies myself back in 2000.

Now, amazingly, the Prague-based documentary streaming/subscription site Doc Alliance Films is hosting an online Agnes Varda retrospective. 17 films from Varda's long career are streaming for free until Feb. 17.

I mention it here because I just watched one of her earliest films, the 1958 short, L'opera-mouffe/ Diary of a Pregnant Woman. It's an 18-minute look through the eyes of the filmmaker, who was then pregnant with her daughter Rosalie.

If Varda's poetic perspective is representative, then, French Rive Gauche pregnancy involves extended stretches of staring into the faces of the old people in your neighborhood and imagining that they, too, were once someone's newborn child--intercut with lots of happy naked time in the courtyard of your appartement, and the occasionally weary hauling of groceries.